Literacy Now

I recently gave a class of preservice teachers a copy of the article “Fostering Academic and Social Growth in A Primary Literacy Workshop Classroom: ‘Restorying’ Students With Negative Reputations” from Elementary School Journal after one of them shared—as an aside in a larger story about an elementary classroom—that one student experiencing difficulty with literacy learning was routinely sent out of class for bad behavior.  Scanning the room, I noticed no one seemed bothered by this information and, in fact, it appeared most considered this to be normal practice.

Behavioral issues—from nonparticipation to total class disruption—are commonly and historically viewed as individual problems solved by fixing the child (or the child’s family). Emotional and interpersonal difficulties are viewed as barriers to academic growth, both for the child in question and for classmates who, hypothetically, can learn in peace once the “problem child” is dealt with.

In this study, Worthy and colleagues (2012) offer a different perspective. In short, they argue that negative identities are socially constructed and should be approached as social problems (see related approaches in Cassetta & Sawyer, 2013). They spent a year in the second-grade classroom of Mae, who, like most teachers, had students who started the school year with negative reputations. In Mae’s classroom, though, these students’ identities made positive shifts. The researchers point out that in many contexts, the negative identities haunting students would be more deeply solidified, or even worsened.

How did Mae make such a difference?  The researchers explained that she socialized marginalized children into the community through literate practices. Two particular children and the growth they and their classmates experienced are included in the study. I will briefly describe one of those cases.

When Lydia began second grade, she had a reputation for being resistant to writing and for being antisocial but with an active fantasy life. Specifically, she had an affinity for fairies. Some adults in school wondered if Lydia had Asperger syndrome. When she resisted interaction for the first several months, Mae did not insist that she participate, but she was not ignoring her either. Mindful that Lydia needed to become socialized and to be a writer, she first worked to gain Lydia’s trust. Eventually, she was able to seize opportunities to capitalize on Lydia’s interests and expertise in class conversations, thus helping her change her status with peers. For instance, when a classmate mentioned that his book included fairies, Lydia piped up with a comment that made it clear she believed in fairies. This might have put her at risk for judgment and further isolation, but Mae interjected that her story was exactly the kind of thing she could write, and then she asked the class if they thought that other authors use the strategy of telling their story to a friend before writing it down. 

Mae repositioned Lydia as a valuable class member—and an author—with important things to say and, consequently, changed the way Lydia and her peers viewed and interacted with each other (and perhaps others in the future), A steady stream of episodes like this one contributed to what Worthy and her colleagues called the “restorying” of Lydia. As a side note, by the end of the year, Lydia was observed reading to the class a piece she wrote and answering questions about it. Also, the possibility of Asperger syndrome was no longer discussed.

When the researchers asked Mae for implications for teaching that make this kind of growth possible, she named two practices. First, literacy workshops allow for student choice and teacher–student interaction. Second, shared book experiences through teacher read-alouds offer a space for students to voice ideas, build meaning together, and appreciate each others’ perspectives.

Gay Ivey, PhD, is the Tashia F. Morgridge Chair in Reading at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a member of the International Literacy Association Literacy Research Panel and vice president-elect of the Literacy Research Association.

The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect educators around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.

This post continues a rebuttal to the claim from a recent report that “To achieve them [the CCSS for kindergarten] usually calls for long hours of drill and worksheets—and reduces other vital areas of learning such as math, science, social studies, art, music and creative play” (p. 6). In the previous post, I discussed one of six example standards listed after this claim. In this post, I discuss the remaining standards.

Print Concepts CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.1.D: Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.

Being able to recognize and name alphabet letters has long been a focus of kindergarten. There are many ways to develop this knowledge with neither drill nor worksheets. Many teachers use children’s names as a tool for developing alphabet knowledge, so, for example, during morning meeting children learn that J is for Jamal, A is for Ava, and so on. Some teachers engage children in making personalized alphabet books, so that they associate each letter-sound with a word that is personally meaningful to them. For my son, D was for Dinosaur. There are many games, both online and off, that can develop and reinforce alphabet knowledge. A puppet, for example, might only want objects that begin with a certain letter. Piasta (2014) emphasizes that alphabet instruction can be differentiated so that children are learning in small groups about the particular letters they don’t yet know (which varies from child to child).

Phonics and Word Recognition CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.B: Associate the long and short sounds with common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.

Research supports being explicit with children: Sometimes this letter stands for the /ā/ sound, and sometimes it makes the /ă/ sound. Children and teacher can think of words with each of those sounds, stretching the sound as needed to support children. As children gain skill, we can sort pictures or objects on the basis of whether we hear the /ā/ or /ă/ at the beginning. Songs such as Apples and Bananas can reinforce the distinction among vowel sounds. Video clips from PBS programs such as Between the Lions and SuperWHY! can be helpful as well. Another tool that research supports involves drawing around the letter in a way that cues its sound (Ehri, Deffner, & Wilce, 1984). For example, lower case o has a picture of an octopus drawn around it. Writing provides a powerful tool for literacy development in kindergarten (Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2010). As children seek to write messages that are meaningful to them, they listen for sounds and words and think about which letters could represent those sounds. Children can be supported in this during interactive writing (Craig, 2003) and also during play. For example, in the housekeeping center the teacher can leave out paper and pen for children to write a grocery list; as children build block structures in a block center, the teacher can help them label their structures, listening for the vowel and other sounds within the words and representing them with letters.

What if a child doesn’t quite master the long and short vowel sounds by the end of K? There is actually an often-overlooked note on both pages of the Foundational Skills standards that states, “Note: In kindergarten children are expected to demonstrate increasing awareness and competence in the areas that follow,” providing some flexibility. By the end of first grade, children are expected to decode regularly spelled, one-syllable words, which provides additional opportunity to reinforce knowledge of short-vowel sounds and their associated letters. 

With these standards we again see that neither drill nor worksheets is needed, or advised to address the CCSS. Put another way, the CCSS are no excuse for those developmentally inappropriate practices.

Here, also, are my brief responses to the remaining three standards listed in the report.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.K.9: With prompting and support, identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic (e.g., in illustrations, descriptions, or procedures).

This is another standard that should in no way be addressed with drills or worksheets. A popular way to address this standard is to read aloud multiple texts on the same topic and lead children in a discussion of their similarities and differences. For example, the teacher might read aloud two books about the life cycle of butterflies and lead a discussion of what is similar and different in the two texts. Some teachers use hula hoops to make a Venn diagram on the floor, place a copy of the book at the top of each hoop, and then work with children to generate and then place sentence strips with the diagram. For example, children might decide that “has drawings,” goes in one circle, “has photographs” goes in the other circle, and “has pictures” goes in the middle. Note that the texts in this example are on a science topic and could be accompanied by the opportunity for students to watch live butterflies go through a life cycle, engage in artwork inspired by butterflies, write their own books about butterflies, and so on, again contradicting the claim that the CCSS necessarily reduce attention to science and other vital areas of learning.

Research to Build and Present Knowledge CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.K.7: Participate in shared research and writing projects.

Drills and worksheets have no place in shared research and writing projects. In contrast, an example of a shared research and writing project for informational writing is children listening to texts read aloud and watching videos about penguins and then writing a class book about penguins, with each child contributing a page to the book with something interesting or important the child has learned about penguins. For narrative writing, an example of a shared research and writing project involves children taking a field trip and then writing a book about it for their families, drawing on their experiences during the field trip and with the materials (e.g., brochures, maps) they gathered there. Again, consider the possibilities for involvement of vital areas of learning beyond literacy alone.

Vocabulary Acquisition and Use CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.K.4.B: Use the most frequently occurring inflections and affixes (e.g., -ed, -s, re-, un-, pre-, -ful, -less) as a clue to the meaning of an unknown word.

Role-play can offer a powerful way to address this standard, from the Language strand of the CCSS. The teacher might start by presenting a word pair, for example, spot and spotless. and discussing the meaning of the affix. Then, children would have the opportunity to act out other pairs, for example, first pretending to feel fear and then pretending to be fearless, first creating a classroom full of noise, then creating a classroom that is noiseless. In my experience, young children delight in this kind of activity and grow in their interest in words.

Nell K. Duke is a professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Michigan, a member of the ILA Literacy Research Panel, and author of Inside Information: Developing Powerful Readers and Writers of Informational Text Through Project-Based Instruction.

The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect educators around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.

In a recent report, three scholars critique the Common Core State Standards for kindergarten. In a two-part blog post, I will focus on one particularly problematic claim in the report. In a box called “Kindergarten has become the New First Grade: Examples from Common Core,” the authors write, “To achieve them [the CCSS for kindergarten] usually calls for long hours of drill and worksheets—and reduces other vital areas of learning such as math, science, social studies, art, music and creative play” (p. 6). The authors go on to list six example standards in the CCSS literacy standards for kindergarten. I believe each standard can be addressed through instruction that involves neither long hours of drill nor worksheets and incorporates other vital areas of learning as well.

The first example standard the authors list is

Fluency CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.4: Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.

Many people have interpreted this standard to mean that children are expected to read by the end of kindergarten. What it actually says is that children are expected to read emergent-reader texts, which is rather different from “reading” as many people understand it. Appendix A of the CCSS defines in its glossary emergent-reader texts as “Texts consisting of short sentences comprised of learned sight words[¹ ] and CVC[²] words; may also include rebuses to represent words that cannot yet be decoded or recognized; see also rebus” (p. 42). An example of an emergent-reader text from TextProject is Buns and Jam. The cover has a photograph of two buns and a bowl of jam along with the title. (Note that in emergent book-reading assessments, teachers are typically expected to read the title to children.) Page one has a photo of buns and the word buns. Page two has a photo of jam and the word jam. The third and final page has a photo of buns with jam on them and reads, “Jam on buns. Yum!”

A more challenging emergent-reader text is Sit by Tom Beedy. Along with the title, the cover has a photo of a hen sitting on eggs. The first page shows a photo of an owl in a tree and reads, “It can sit in a tree.” The word tree has a drawing of a tree above it (a rebus; some books have so much support in the main picture or photo that it might be seen as acting as a rebus, leading more texts to be counted as emergent-reader texts by the CCSS definition). The next page shows a photo of a joey in his or her mother kangaroo’s pouch and reads, “It can sit in Mom.” Notably, this and the other emergent-reader text I described are much less challenging than what we have historically expected children to read by the end of first grade—books such as Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik, for example—contradicting the report’s claim that “Kindergarten has become the New First Grade.”

Not surprisingly, the most straightforward way to help children learn to read emergent-reader texts is to read such books with children. The teacher points to words as he or she reads them to show children that we read from left to right and word by word (Zucker, Ward, & Justice, 2009). Children and teachers discuss the photographs or illustrations in the book, which are often of high interest, building observation skills (Roberts et al., 2013). The teacher demonstrates how to look at each letter, consider the sound associated with that letter, and blend those sounds together to make words; she or he prompts children to use the letters to identify words (Scanlon, Anderson, & Sweeney, 2010). For example, a child who reads “It is a mouse” for “It is a rat” might be coached to look at the first letter and then subsequent letters in the word and try again. The teacher may read the book several times and then provide opportunities for children to do the same, to increase familiarity with the words within.

Neither long hours of drill nor worksheets are needed—or even are effective—at addressing this standard. And emergent-reader texts can be selected that coordinate with the science or social studies curriculum (e.g., using Sit, described above, in a study of animal habitats or a book about jobs for a community helpers unit).

In the second installment of my post, I will discuss ways to address the other five example standards in this section of the report, again demonstrating that neither long hours of drill nor worksheets are needed.

Nell K. Duke is a professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Michigan, a member of the ILA Literacy Research Panel, and author of Inside information: Developing powerful readers and writers of informational text through project-based instruction.

The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect educators around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.

When two of my colleagues, Mary Lou Rube and Susanna Smith, returned from the IRA 2012 Conference in Chicago, Abingdon Elementary School principal Joanne Uyeda and I eagerly joined them in the reading room for a debrief session.

First on the agenda: The research of Richard Allington and his colleagues (Allington et al., 2010) around summer slide and the achievement gap, a gap familiar to our colleagues whose students clearly resembled the children Allington described. 

June reading scores consistently revealed that our teachers’ careful planning and children’s diligent efforts had paid off, but three months later, a different story emerged. The children in our charge were living proof of the research: Summer slide was pervasive in Arlington’s Title I schools. 

Our September reading scores were a vivid reminder that our mantra, “Keep reading over the summer!” had proved a poor elixir. Something more potent was required if our children were to maintain their previous year’s reading growth.

Enter Allington and his story about one district’s staff delivering books to a low-income neighborhood via a school bus during the summer. Joanne exclaimed, “Well, if they can do it, so can we!”

“You get the bus, and I’ll get the books!” I responded, without considering how I could possibly keep this promise.

Thirty minutes later Joanne confirmed that our superintendent, Patrick Murphy, had approved our request for a bus, and Sheryl Leeds, Title I supervisor, had agreed to contribute $500 to what would soon become “The Abingdon Read & Roll Summer Book Bus.” We had responded to Allington’s call to arms, and our enthusiasm and team spirit buoyed us through the next six weeks of frenetic planning.

The results? Twenty-five percent of our children visited the Abingdon Read & Roll Summer Book Bus that summer and borrowed 647 books! The next summer, student participation increased by 40%. Finally, we had found an antidote to summer slide and, along the way, built a team forever inspired by Allington’s speech at the IRA Conference.

Below, you will find the six-point plan that enabled us to finally give our children a powerful remedy to the tenacious summer slide that had plagued us for years:

Step 1: Define the vision (i.e., Diminish summer slide by making high-quality reading materials accessible to our children via a summer book bus), explicitly share the vision with staff, and recruit a team of passionate volunteers.

Step 2: List all major tasks necessary to fulfill the vision, have volunteers sign up for specific tasks, and keep the team informed each step of the way. Major tasks include the following:

• Writing letters to perspective benefactors requesting book donations. Incentivize by promising to advertise their logos/company names on the banners located on each side of the bus.
• Entering each child’s data into an electronic database so teacher volunteers can help guide children when checking out titles.
• Scanning book titles into an electronic database so children can check out books just like they do at the school library. This helps with book returns. Volunteers also stamp and level books.
• Locating a district MIFI to use with scanner for checking books in and out
• Identifying five calendar days for bus deployment and four or five most densely populated stops.
• Advertising via a Parent Information Night, class newsletters, neighborhood paper, and robocalls.
• Prioritizing students’ high-interest books and arranging for student choice, which are key to students’ decisions to read (Cahill, Horvath, McGill-Franzen & Allington, 2013).

Step 3: Ignore the naysayers. They will derail your plans before you get started and deplete the team’s energy if you allow them.

Step 4: Analyze data to determine success of the initiative.

Step 5: Reflect on data and execution of plan and revise accordingly.

Step 6: Repeat.

Note: Special thanks to Arlington Superintendent, Dr. Patrick Murphy, Title I Supervisor Sheryl Leeds, Abingdon principal Joanne Uyeda, Abingdon’s PTA, reading specialists, Mary Lou Rube and Susanna Smith, librarian Meghan Fatouros, second-grade teacher Anne Marie Weaver, our generous book benefactors, and our tireless volunteers. Their enthusiasm, dedication, and focus led to the successful launch of Abingdon’s Read & Roll Book Bus and the literacy gains of our students.

Erin Watson is a professional development specialist with the Title I program at Arlington Public Schools in Virginia. 

The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect educators around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.

Question:

What should be the focus of instruction for older students with low reading achievement?

Response from Gay Ivey:

For older students (grades 4–12), it might seem a logical first course of action to make sure that certain fundamental skills were not “missed” by returning to concerns associated with early reading (e.g., phonemic awareness, phonics, literal-level comprehension). However, this is not always necessary and, in any case, is rarely sufficient.

Readers vary in terms of what they have experienced and what they need (Dressman, Wilder & Conner, 2005; Ivey, 1999), and standardized tests alone provide insufficient information about these complexities. For instance, Marsha Riddle Buly and Sheila Valencia (2002) took a closer look at fourth-grade students who scored below proficiency levels on a state-mandated reading test. They demonstrated, by using other assessment tools, that high stakes test scores mask the complexity of individuals as readers, and thus, provide little guidance for the instruction they need. Some students, for example, were still learning to read words, and for others, word identification was not a problem at all, but they struggled to make sense of the texts they were asked to read. Some readers experienced multiple challenges with the assessments. Questions about motivation and engagement were not addressed in their assessments, but also might have been a factor. In any case, a singular focus on concerns associated with early reading would have failed to serve the needs of students.

It is also not the case that simply pinpointing a student’s “weakness” is the best, or only, approach to improving performance. Reading is a vastly more complex process than being able to read more fluently or use comprehension strategies, even though we have amassed a large body of research on improving those areas separately. If you offered instruction that aims to improve fluency, for instance, you might get a student who reads more fluently, but not one who is necessarily a better or more purposeful overall reader.

Complicating matters is that year-after-year of unpleasant school reading experiences leads to counter-productive narratives about who students are as readers (Hall, 2009), and many research-based interventions focused on reading skills and strategies don’t demonstrate a shift in this problem or in students’ sense of agency and purpose in their reading.

What should we consider when planning instruction for older inexperienced readers? Our first order of business is to realize we are dealing with individuals who have rich and complicated lives and to whom relationships and social worlds matter greatly.  They will read more, read more proficiently, and more purposefully when we center our efforts on the social and motivational reality of their lives. Peter Johnston and I (Ivey & Johnston, 2013) found that low-scoring, previously inexperienced eighth-grade readers, when given access to compelling young adult literature dealing with issues that mattered to them, not only read enthusiastically, but also demonstrated many of the strategic reading behaviors we try to teach students explicitly. They even created their own strategies for getting through really interesting, but really complicated texts. We concluded that although you can teach reading strategies, students are more likely to use strategic practices when they are engaged in what they read and, in the process, with each other.

We want older students to read and make sense of text beyond a literal level, to use reading as a way to consider multiple perspectives on big issues, to solve problems (including their own personal and social problems), and dig deeper into complex issues. Engagement, and thus more meaningful and productive reading, is most likely when readers feel a sense of autonomy (i.e., to choose what they read; to not be interrogated about their reading or monitored) and experience a sense of relevance in their reading (Guthrie, Wigfield & You, 2012). In contrast, we have yet to see research-based examples of how an exclusive focus on “the basics” gets all students to that point.

Gay Ivey holds a PhD and Masters in reading education. She is a professor in the department of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin.
The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect ILA members around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.